Shakespeare's Way - March 2015

In March 2015, we took a walking holiday in Britain along Shakespeare's Way, the marked trail running from Stratford-upon-Avon to the Globe Theatre in London.

Michele and I did about 100 kilometres of it, as far as Oxford. 

"It will be a great break from our routine," she predicted.  In part, from our routine of healthy eating, going to the gym, and wearing dry clothes.  Here is our experience.

Day 1 - The Bard's Book Shop

In Stratford-Upon-Avon, on the day before we began our walk to Oxford, we dropped into a unique book store, a place that provides the perfect launch point for the walk down Shakespeare’s Way.   

The Shakespeare Hospice Book Shop sits on Rother Street a couple of blocks from the Virginia Inn, our first B&B, making it an easy first stop on our tour around town. 

Visiting the shop allowed me to indulge in a favourite pastime. For me, a student of comic-tragic literature and developing writer, the old books, CDs, maps, and material about and by the Bard linked the walk to my personal interests and to my most recent project, which was fuelled by many visits to used bookstores in Canada.

As its name announces, the bookstore raises funds for the Hospice, a charity that, among

other things, maintains a residential home for those with chronic disability or terminal disease. The Hospice volunteers fundraise through many instruments including a store that sells second hand items of all kinds.  So many people in this highly literate community donated used books that a separate, spinoff store had to be created for this purpose alone. 

We dropped by the book shop just after opening time.  It was already busy, yet the staff was surprisingly enthusiastic about my self-serving donation of books that I had written and took time to talk about them. 

The gesture thus allowed me to support the charity and to tell myself that my writing would be sold alongside the works of Shakespeare in the Bard’s home town.  But this is not the reason for using this store as a starting point for the walk.  The genuine and nobler one comes from the Shakespeare’s Way Association which actively encourages people like us to give meaning to their walks by using them as fundraisers for the Hospice.  The Association also passes all profits on the sale of its publications to the same charity, and given how much we benefited from those publications over the following week, we were more than pleased to make a monetary donation at the end of what the Association calls a “journey of the imagination.”

Of course, the store is merely the specific touchstone within the more significant frame, which is the town of Shakespeare’s birth and burial.  Like all visitors to Stratford-upon-Avon, we logged a few kilometres for our journey before leaving town.

In the well- trodden tourist itinerary, we visited Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, a pub, Holy Trinity Church, a tea room, Mary Arden’s farm, another pub.  We even clocked a few extra metres walking by the Bard’s birthplace and home twice before noticing the bush covered panel for the entrance of the Shakespeare centre.  Inside, our backpack flag invited a beaming account of the 2014 visit to the centre by another Canadian, the then one-month-old Suzana Kirk.   Her parents came to Stratford-upon-Avon for her birth and baptism in Holy Trinity Church.




A Curse - discourages DNA Testing

Her father, originally from British Columbia, is directly related to Shakespeare's sister.  Unless DNA testing someday reveals illegitimate descendants of the Bard’s stops along Shakespeare’s Way, the little Canadian Suzana, Shakespeare’s 14^th great-niece, remains a vital continuation of the line.

We missed the tour of the Royal Shakespeare Company theatres, and because the RSC was not performing a Shakespearean work, we skipped the play settling instead for some souvenirs.

I bought a mug with a quote from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to encourage Michele, my own little Canadian, in the 100 kilometre walk ahead of us.

Day 2 - Basic Lessons from Guide Book

“What the fffgg !” 

This was my initial reaction as I tried to walk, scratch my head, chew my lip, and read the Shakespeare’s Way guide book heading out of out of town and onto the trail.   

You try it.  Read the paragraph below out loud.   Put it down, and then repeat any sentence from it without screwing up the sequence, leaving out a vital detail, or checking the text three times.  Not possible.

It reads like something written to purposely confuse and maybe even intimidate.  

I almost tossed the thing away assuming that the detailed Ordinance Map would be all we needed to find the next town and our next bed. But we learned that the guide book, not the map, would save us.

The trick is just to wait and not use the book until you think you might be getting lost.

Then, at that moment, stop, stand still and read the section about the place where you think you are – because, at this point, you can check the tortuous text against your surroundings.  You can look around for the pair of oak trees, the “scrappy fence,” and the dip at the end of the field.  It works.  The words not only make sense, they comfort you with assurance that you are where you are supposed to be and more importantly that you may even be headed in the right direction.

Learning to let go of the map, to disregard our gut feelings, and to lean on the detailed text of the guide book constituted one of the foundational lessons we absorbed after leaving  Stratford-Upon-Avon behind and heading into the north Cotswolds countryside. We also had to learn to walk confidently through backyards, laneways, and other private lands as part of England’s well established public right of way system.  

People waved, hundreds of lambs circled around us, and dogs yawned.   

In Canada, we would definitely feel like we were abusing someone’s privacy, and in parts of the U.S., we would be guilty of gun-shot-worthy trespassing.

Other basic lessons included the need to not expect rest stops on the way.   Many pubs, like the Clifford Chambers’ one (it's the name of a village not a tweedy old man), operate on schedules designed to ensure they are closed when we needed them.   Stores like the tiny shop in Preston-on-Stour have no rest rooms, and evidently, as I also learned, English trail etiquette deems it poor form for walkers take advantage of their gender in this context.       

At the Bell Inn in Alderminster that afternoon and at the Poplars farmhouse in Newbold-on-Stour that night, we talked about dodging the sheep dung, getting lost using the map, and finding our way reading long paragraphs about fences, fields, and trees as if they were big adventures - and we felt many different kinds of relief.  

One came from clutching onto that wordy and quirky guide book. 

Day 3 - Farm Stays and Dead Romans

I like walking over English farm land, staying overnight in English farm houses, and eating English farm food – but I don’t think that I would like English farm life. 

English farmers have to fight ancient ghosts and modern demons.

Listening to the folks at the Farm Stays on our Shakespeare’s Way walk and later in pubs, I heard the usual lamentations.  The kind my family likes to recite on the porches facing rolling fields in Central Ontario.  But with the West Midlands accent.

The Warwickshire men seem to like the farming - and don’t complain about long days, hard work, or the weather - but about all the “booolshut and guhvurrrrmunt burrrrackrasssy !”

Canada and most other countries also like to test the toughness of their farmers by getting them pull wagonloads of paper behind them.   Not just for the taxman, but also for inspections of every kind, environmental regulations, land use laws, crop management, and animal hygiene.   I’m not sure if, like Britain, we have “agricultural waste exemption forms,” “applications for water abstraction in trickle drip irrigation” or an “annual allergen undertaking” in Canada, but I am sure we have our obfuscating, demonic equivalents.

But one thing we Canadians don’t have to the same extent are dead Romans.

The Romans liked their paperwork ---  well ---  their chiseled stones, wall paintings, papyrus, and parchmentwork.  So, perhaps, it’s fitting that their legacy in Britain should be that wagonload of bureaucratic requirements for anyone considering innovative land use, new construction, or additions, or just trying to “get the Hell out of farming” by selling off the land for condos.  According to our Farm Stay hosts, you also have to endure a tortuous archaeological assessment -   just in case some Roman official was buried under your chicken coop two thousand years ago.

We nodded over our eggs and blood pudding and agreed this archaeological stuff might make sense in places like London, Colchester, or Bath  – but was silly out here.

But an hour later, leaving Newbold on Stour and heading back toward the main trails by Halford, I checked the guide book and noted that we had to cross the busy A429 highway.  The book mentioned in passing that it lies on top of the Fosse Way, the ancient roadway that linked Exeter in the south to Lincolnshire in Roman times.  

I looked around for the ghosts of Roman soldiers and the shadows of government bureaucrats.

Day 4 - Shopping on Stour

“I’m going to go out - and buy a pair of gaiters.”

“A pair of what ?”

“Gaiters -  you know those things you wear around your legs to keep the snow out of your boots,” she said pointing at her manure-and-mud covered legs.

Smugly, I snorted a laugh, shook my head, and went back to scraping off my boots with a stick.  I thought she was funny for two reasons.  First, it amused me to see my wife struggling to keep her clothes clean for a change.  I’m usually the one who has spilt something on his shirt or has slipped on something messy.

But on this trip, I was better equipped than her.  With new water-resistent hiking boots and zip-leg pants (the kind that covert into shorts), I was able to wipe off and zip off the muddy bits with ease.  Michele was envious because I could make myself instantly presentable at places like the refurbished Old Mill Inn on the edge of Shipston on Stour.

The other reason I found humour in Michele’s gaiter-buying plan came from our day’s walk and my limited knowledge of this new town.  For most of the day, we would have had trouble buying a stick of gum let alone a piece of equipment that I associate with cross country skiing and winters in Ottawa.

After leaving Halford, a place where the Gulf Station and store proudly announces “No Toilet,” but has tons of things to drink, we passed through points on the map that might be better described as "cluster of trees," "old bridge," and "sewage station."  Not a great  shopping area and not much different from the other towns we had seen so far.

But this is not true of Shipston on Stour.

It turns out that this is a fairly busy little crossroads and has a lively commercial area around the town’s “Market Square.”

Oh yeah, and it has different places to eat and more than one good pub.  We spent a couple of hours at one, first sipping our beer and then sipping our dinner (literally, I had, for the first and last time, a meat pie drenched in suet – the liquefied mutton fat drawn, I was told, from around “the loins and kidneys.”)

What was I thinking ?  Not sure.

What was I saying ?  Oh yeah, the Market Square and the stores.

So, as it turns out, within a block of the Mill Inn, Michele entered a store, the very first one we came upon, and within minutes bought a pair of low cost gaiters to cover her legs.  I was stunned.

As I said, I underestimated the diversity of the commercial centre in Shipston on Stour.  This is understandable given our experience to that point.

But, really after all these years, I should not have underestimated my wife’s ability when it comes to shopping.

Day 5 - The Whichford Pitch Fork

 Do you ever dream that someone is driving a pitch fork through your throat while trying to slice a crucifix into your chest with a broken wine glass ?

Me neither.

But it could happen – considering our night in Long Compton.

After a long, grey, drizzly day walking through the countryside from Shipston on Stour, we were happy to reach the village edge and our cottage-like room on the Yerdley Farm.  The walk that day had a different feel. 

A persistent mist enveloped the church yards, the old manor houses, and spinneys of trees, easing only at dusk as we entered the last leg which went through the ethereal Whichford Wood.

Our arrival coincided with supper time.  We were hungry and chilled so we took our host’s

advice and reserved a table at the Red Lion Inn.

We were also hungry for Internet access and opened the IPad as soon as we ordered our food.  You don’t have to Google very long to find references to Long Compton’s greatest claim to fame and stories that fit the mood of the day and drizzling outside.

Witches.

This association with witchcraft and witches goes back to the Middle Ages, and most accounts can be easily placed in the bucket of superstition and general nuttiness of the era.  But one story from the late 19^th century is harder to shake off, particularly when you are sitting in the Red Lion Inn.

Evidently, on the 15^th September in 1875, a deranged farm hand attacked and brutally murdered a 79-year-old woman mid-day as she left the baker’s with a loaf of bread.

He plunged a pitch fork into her throat and then proceeded to carve crucifixes into her face and chest with a machete-like hook.   Most people were, of course, horrified.  But some just nodded saying “oh, I guess she must have been a Long Compton witch.”  These grim measures were, evidently, the established means of dispatching a witch.  The delusional defendant eventually starved himself to death in prison, but not before telling the world that there were more witches in and around Long Compton.

We laughed.  But also topped up the wine glasses a bit after reading that the recited facts of the case came from the Inquest held where we were sitting in the Red Lion Inn.

The rain picked up again in time for our walk back to the Farm, passing the church and its odd lynch gate building that has sheltered funeral processions for centuries and likely that of our pitchforked witch.  Again we were glad to get inside, turn up the heat, and plot the next day's walk which would take us by the famous neolithich monuments known as the Rollright Stones.

Looking at the Ipad references to the site, Michele said “hey, I guess you knew the Stones were made by a witch ?”

Day 6 - Stone Stories

 I think the Shakespeare’s Way Association should make an amendment to its map.

Their path should formally and clearly include a tour around the Rollright Stones.

According to the map and the guide book, walkers are supposed to head out southwest of Long Compton and jut back to the village of Little Rollright almost purposely missing the ancient stone circle and monuments.  Yeah, Right - Roll-My-Eyes Right !

I can’t imagine that any walkers, including Shakespeare (no matter how anxious he was to get to London and build a theatre), would not take the extra time to walk over to see the Stones while passing through the area.  They might as well make the detour officially part of the pathway.

I love things like these Stones.

From one perspective- a pile of lumpy rock.  From another - a perfect setting for spiritual connection.  And from another – yet another great Long Compton witch story. 

The Stones are really three sites. The leaning clumps down the hill are deemed “the Whispering Knights” – though they looked liked they were kissing or cuddling to me.

The two sites closest to the roadway comprise a circle of about 70 stones and the single, large stone standing by itself on the other side of the road. These are the circle of the Knights and the King Stone.

Although the various stones have been dated as being erected a thousand years apart in some cases, the favoured explanation involves an event that took place in a flashing instant. It is said that a Viking king and his army were turned to stone by an angry witch while they were trying to conquer the whole
of England.

In flowery Warwickshire detail, it’s a great story, second only to the one cooked up by an occult leader who is my stone story hero.  He convinced young women that pressing their naked breasts against the Stones would make them fertile.

So, there’s a couple of good reasons to rejig the map and add this spot to the Shakespeare’s Way tour.

Day 7 - Not Important

Most of the time, searching for hedges, low spots in a field, and other reference points from the map and guide book made our Shakespeare’s Way walk more interesting and fun.   

We even thought it was funny when we walked past our B&B in Enstone, the Swan Lodge, three times before recognizing it.  The Swan likes to keep its sandwich board sign folded up and halfway up the lane.

But our walk around Enstone also reminded me of the pleasures that come when you don’t have to scan the horizon, to search for a style, to decide which faint path is the right one or to think.  It’s nice to just walk and daydream a bit.

You can do that when you following the streets in Chipping Norton or the marked path through the medieval earth works of Old Chalford Village or the trail bordered by forest between Clevely and the A44.

Without consistent Internet access, we read unconnected material most of the time.   Aside from books and maps about our walk, Michele had her paperback of Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island.  I assumed that she was recalling the funny bits when snorting, chortling, and breathing heavily along the trail.

I had my Kindle with some old downloads including the 25^th Anniversary edition of Steven R. Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. This is what I read at night during our walk on Shakespeare’s Way, and this is what infiltrated my thoughts during those map-free stretches of walking during the day.

 The late Mr. Covey’s book pioneered the concept of four quadrants of time management urging us to focus on what was important and to think long term.

At night, reading the book in a darkened room, the ideas made sense and resonated as they did decades ago when I first read them.

But during the day, walking along the path through the woods, I kept thinking “when I get home I’m going to work on my agenda so I spend more time doing stuff that is Not Urgent and Not Important.”

Day 8 - China admist the Blenheim china

Blenheim Palace makes me squirm.

You can’t deny its magnificence, and I admire the First Duke of Marlborough, who received the Palace and its lands after his success at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704. 

But it took some work to appreciate him and his victory because it unfolded within the very screwy War of the Spanish Succession. 

That War was intertwined with the even screwier South Seas scandal, a stock market catastrophe generated by English interest in the slave trade.  One of my presumed ancestors was criminally involved in the entreprise and thus my long acquaintance with the details.

Sprinkle the long string of less-than-admirable succeeding Dukes over this history (though I do have a soft spot for the new one, Jamie who turned his life around before his dad’s passing last year), and you find yourself walking toward Woodstock and the Palace with a smirk and a “stroppy” mix of expectations. 

This feeling of contradiction was magnified by weather that shifted from wildly windy to calm and sunny.  The scenery changes a lot too.  Pheasant-filled fields and forests, like Deadman’s Riding Wood and King’s Wood, as well as stately farm manors like Ditchley Mansion, where Churchill held wartime cabinet meetings.

The Blenheim estate hits you with all of the above:  trees, fields, and more pheasants as well as amazing architecture that begins with the nine-mile long, dry-stone wall you surmount to enter. All of this made for an oddly appropriate backdrop to our tour of Blenheim the next day. 

After trying out two pubs and the hot pastries at our B&B, the Blenheim Buttery, we waddled over to the Palace anticipating a standard historic site tour of gift shops, cafeteria food, art and artefacts.

But Blenheim does something different.   Last October, under the stardust of the new Blenheim Art Foundation, the Palace launched a program of contemporary art exhibitions, beginning with the works of Chinese human rights advocate Ai Weiwei.  His work is not at the extreme end of modern art, but it still jars some people to see it exhibited in the Estate Rooms amidst the old European furniture, tapestries, and china.

When we were told that the ceramic crab pile on the floor was inspired by Weiwei’s last meal before his arrest in 2011, I thought of the slave trade, my ancestors, and the War of Spanish Succession that produced this place.

And I saw no incongruity or contradiction in scene.

 

 

 

Day 9 - From Bladon to Betting Shop

Not long after leaving Woodstock, we stopped by a grave in the town of Bladon. It reminded us that similar modest sites and events had really defined our walk.

A Muntjac deer bolted across the path in front of us one day.  Stocky and hunched, it barely looked deer-like, more like a pig and left us with a “What the Hell?” feeling for hours.   Sometimes a guide book cited tree that might seem unremarkable in other circumstances touched us as the comforting sign that we were still on track.  The thatched homes and old manors might seem humble in isolation, but in quantity they framed the whole experience.

The modest tomb in Bladon’s churchyard provides the final resting place of Sir Winston Churchill.  Some wonder why his body does not lie in Westminister Abbey or even on the Blenheim Palace grounds.  But St. Martin’s churchyard holds the Churchill family plot and thus the bodies of his parents, his wife, and his children.

Back in Woodstock, I had joked that the Brits got their money’s worth from the Palace by providing a venue for Winston’s premature birth. But, of course, it served greater purpose by inspiring with expectations of greatness that somehow slipped off some cousins, but stuck to the defiant little Winnie.

Because the map showed our route would be increasingly urban as we approached Oxford, I assumed we would be passing by more and more churchyard-like markers, street signs, buildings, and obvious references. 

So it seemed strange to see this passage in the guidebook “you are advised to follow route directions below with great care.”  We learned, as you approach the city, the way markers are, in fact, less frequent and clear.  So, we read and looked and read and looked and found our way down to “the Duke’s Cut” and the locks where we joined the Oxford Canal leading to the city centre.

We followed the Canal as the most direct route.  But if you have time, you probably should veer off onto what we understand is the more scenic River Thames option.  The Canal has some pretty spots, and the adjacent path, which was in past centuries beaten down by horses pulling barges, makes for an easy walk.  But it does have a dodgy feel.
 

I would not say that the people living in boats throw their garbage along the canal.  But the route does have a string of rusting bicycles, garden furniture, and some sinking barges that do give the route the air of a recycling plant if not a dump – at times.

In Oxford, we visited bones and shrunken heads in the Museum, saw a first Folio at the Bodleian, and did some shopping before officially declaring our walk at an end.  But to do this, we had to find another Oxford site, one near the end of the Cornmarket pedestrian mall.  This is the location where the Crown Tavern once sat. 

Shakespeare’s friend John Davenant owned the Crown, and we know that the playwright stayed here on his walks from Stratford-Upon-Avon.   The convincing evidence includes the beauty of Davenant’s wife and her son’s suggestions that Shakespeare may have been more than just his godfather.  

Today, you would not know this location had any significance without such references and written directions.  The entrance leads to a betting shop, and no signage suggests anything noteworthy ever took place in this building.

I can understand why I drew quizzical looks from others in the mall when I posed in front of the betting shop for a celebratory photo.  But, for me, it was another in the string of modest, but memorable events that helped define our walk on Shakespeare’s Way. 

Day 10 - My Weight and Shakespeare's Way

 

 

Looking back on our walk and preparing to leave Shakespeare's Way behind us, one thought and one message to other travellers stands out in my mind.

“Try not to lose your lens cap in a pasture full of sheep.”

Sheep turds take the form of small, bumpy, black discs that are easy to mistake for lens caps. The search for a camera cover turns into a bending, groping, blindfolded "Where's Waldo?" that can run an hour or more with no success, leaving your eyes burning and your fingers sticky for days. Like lens caps, the discs are also easy to step on.

But if it does happen, look at the bright side. You're burning up a few calories and helping to work off the effects of the small, dark bumpy bits that you ate at breakfast or in the pub the night before. This ironic blend of food and foot paths defines British walking holidays.

The walk through ancient villages and rolling countryside in this part of England soothes the spirit, and we would do it again. But it was a week long struggle, not so much with the hills, wind, drizzle and mud, but with that pervasive air of British contradiction. English foot paths like this one take walkers through long stretches of fresh air and exercise pocked by the dietary dead ends of beer, pub food, and calorie laden English breakfasts.

As you will have read, each morning we ingested piles of sausages, bacon, beans, fried tomatoes, eggs, and toast, unsure of when we’d eat again; during the day, we picnicked on Cadbury products; each night, we succumbed to the exquisiteness of cold drinks and warm comfort foods at end of a day in the countryside. Even though we walked for up to six hours each day, across fields, up hills and against wind and rain, we knew that miles were not the only thing we were putting under our belts.

An English walking holiday probably would not merit its name if you tried to sustain yourself with watercress and celery sticks throughout, and I now see the times we retraced our steps or found a pub closed as blessings because they offset bad diet decisions.  

Still, my strained eyes and soiled fingers would advocate for holding on tight to the lens cap.   Thanks for sharing our experience.